Predictability and hierarchy in Drosophila behavior.

Publication Year
2016

Type

Journal Article
Abstract

Even the simplest of animals exhibit behavioral sequences with complex temporal dynamics. Prominent among the proposed organizing principles for these dynamics has been the idea of a hierarchy, wherein the movements an animal makes can be understood as a set of nested subclusters. Although this type of organization holds potential advantages in terms of motion control and neural circuitry, measurements demonstrating this for an animal's entire behavioral repertoire have been limited in scope and temporal complexity. Here, we use a recently developed unsupervised technique to discover and track the occurrence of all stereotyped behaviors performed by fruit flies moving in a shallow arena. Calculating the optimally predictive representation of the fly's future behaviors, we show that fly behavior exhibits multiple time scales and is organized into a hierarchical structure that is indicative of its underlying behavioral programs and its changing internal states.

Journal
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
Volume
113
Issue
42
Pages
11943-11948
Date Published
10/2016
ISSN Number
1091-6490
Alternate Journal
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.
PMCID
PMC5081631
PMID
27702892